This research profile area brings together descriptive, historical and theoretical linguistics, as well as psycho- and neurolinguistics.

Western countries still tend to view Africa as the periphery, says anthropologist Mayke Kaag. In her inaugural lecture, she calls for a shift in perspective: to see Africa as a mirror of global developments.

At the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS), scholars have been studying the Indian subcontinent with attention and expertise for more than 100 years. This part of South Asia is an economic giant with a population of over two billion. Nira Wickramasinghe, Professor of Modern South Asian Studies,…

The winner of the Africa Thesis Award 2023 is Rachel Dubale, a graduate from the Research Master in African Studies at Leiden University, with her thesis “They think we can eat the condominium”. Chronicles of Economic, Social and Political Practices in Addis Ababa’s Condominiums.

Strengthening the cooperation between Moroccan, other African, and Dutch institutions for higher education. This was the focus of a two-day seminar at NIMAR (Netherlands Institute Morocco) in Rabat in July, during which scholars of the African Studies Centre Leiden interacted with colleagues from NIMAR…

Science diplomacy, broadly defined as all activities at the intersection of science and foreign policy, has become a buzzword during the past ten years.

Our library contains around 23,000 books, journals and historical documents under the care of a specialized librarian.

Our team is committed to the study of knowledge in its broadest sense, encompassing both ideas and practices in all its historical variety. We look at what people regarded as knowledge, how they created, collected, circulated and used it, also why it mattered to them, and how all this was embedded in…

The renovation of the South Cluster has been in full swing over the recent period. As the completion date approaches, no later than 1 April, we're excited to provide you with a glimpse of the current state of the building.

To be eligible for South Asian Studies at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

MA student African Studies Eline Sleurink is currently on an internship in Accra, the capital of Ghana. She’s sharing her adventures on The Leidener, a blog that is run by international students of Leiden University.

The African Studies Centre Leiden’s Research Programme for 2025-2029 is called ‘African Trajectories: Past Dependencies and New Directions’. Building on its former programme, it extends the recognition of Africa’s pivotal role in world affairs. The continent’s global significance has become increasingly…

Africa is online. Leiden Africa expert Mirjam de Bruijn is fascinated by the fast development of mobile telephony and social media in Africa. She maintains a website on the topic, focusing on isolated, marginalised and conflict-ridden areas in Middle Africa.

In his new six-hour series, Africa's Great Civilizations, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. takes a new look at the history of Africa, from the birth of humankind to the dawn of the 20th century. One of the experts interviewed in the programme is our own dr. Sada Mire.

To be eligible for Global Asian Studies at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

Natural resources often stretch across borders that separate modern nation states. This can create conflict and limit opportunities for regulated consumption of their goods and services, but also provide opportunities for joint multinational efforts that exceed single country capabilities.

This project aims to produce empirical data on migration processes in non-Western locales, and to contribute to migration studies theory-building with new insights and through comparative perspective.

What is federalism; what are the implications of decentralisation? Do federalism and decentralisation contribute to democratisation, governance, and diversity? Virtually all African countries south of the Sahara are now either federal or decentralised—but how do their systems of governance perform?…

To be eligible for Southeast Asian Studies at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

The symposium “Human-Wildlife conflicst in Africa” was held on the 27th October in the Academie gebouw of Leiden University in honor of the retirement of Prof.dr.ir. Hans H. de Iongh

Africa is rising and increasingly seen as a potential market by economic actors from Africa and the rest of the world. What is the interrelationship between governance, entrepreneurship and inclusive development?

What are the rights of migrants in Morocco and how do this receiving state and migrants deal with them in practice?

Aron is a second-year student of Korean Studies. He was in Seoul as part of the stay-abroad portion of the program when Leiden University took measures due to the coronavirus. He and his fellow students decided to let the last flight back to the Netherlands pass to stay in South Korea.

This interdisciplinary study focuses on (trans)national ethnic and popular networks, combining historical-ethnographic and computational methods to understand the ‘workings’ of networked conflict interfering in the increasingly violent conflict in the Sahel (Africa) and beyond. The project focuses on…

South Africa is suing Israel on charges of genocide in Gaza. The case is being heard at the International Court of Justice in The Hague this week. Professor Larissa van den Herik, an expert in Public International Law specialising in the law on genocide, explains the situation to NOS.

Gold Matters: Sustainability Transformations in Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining: A Multi-Actor and Trans-Regional Perspective.This project explores whether a transformative approach towards sustainability can arise in Artisanal and Smallscale Gold Mining (ASGM).

A thorough description of the relationships among languages and their social environment in a given context, reflecting an ecological perspective, involves attention to the agency of local actors, and the policies, discourse, and ideologies that surround them.

This comparative study investigates court politics in four kingdoms that succeeded the south Indian Vijayanagara empire during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: Ikkeri, Tanjavur, Madurai, and Ramnad. Building on a unique combination of unexplored Indian texts and Dutch archival records, this research…

In this book Adam Fairclough chronicles the odyssey of black teachers in the South from emancipation in 1865 to integration one hundred years later.

Ramesh Ganohariti will examine legal identity in three post-Soviet aspirant states and outline four common scenarios in this article.

Although official law generally conceives of personal injury victims as individual rights holders, the actual experience of physical injury and its consequences is relational. Indeed, many researchers in the global North as well as the global South have contended that the very concept of the Self should…

On Tuesday 22 January 2019, Beryl ter Haar participated in a comparative law lecture featuring labour law cases of the constitutional court of South Africa at the Kutafin State Law University Moscow, Russia. Topics discussed included short term employment contracts, the right to strike and the right…

This summer, PhD students Marta Maggioni and Rosa Winter went to Africa. Not just to enjoy the beautiful continent, but also to stir up the enthusiasm of young students for mathematics. They volunteered at math camps in Kenya and Ghana. ‘I think it is important they experience the fun of maths.’

The United States used threats to influence the nuclear programs of Iran, Libya and South Africa. How effective was this diplomatic coercion?

Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

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To be eligible for Theoretical Philosophy at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

To be eligible for MSc. Public Administration at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

To be eligible for Policy in Practice at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

To be eligible for the Clinical and Health Psychology Research Master's specialisation at Leiden University, you must meet the following requirements.